Brazilian Construction Worker Survives A Pole Piercing Through His Skull

Phineas Gage, the 19th-century rail worker who secured himself an
immortal place in entry-level psychology textbooks when he
survived an accident in which his brain was fully pierced by a
large iron spike, can get off his historical high horse.

A 24-year-old Brazilian construction worker named Eduardo Leite
has just survived an eerily similar accident, and he may walk
away from his ordeal in
better shape than Gage, who reportedly underwent pronounced
personality changes after the spike was removed.

Luiz Alexander Essinger, the chief of staff at the hospital where
Leite was taken after his frontal lobe was gouged by a 6-foot (2
meter) pole, "said Leite was lucid and showed no negative
consequences after the operation," as
reported by the Associated Press. The rod fell from the fifth
floor of a building Leite was working on, piercing his hard hat
before entering the back of his skull and exiting between his
eyes.

"Today, he continues well, with few complaints for a
five-hour-long surgery," Essinger told the AP. "He says he feels
little pain."

The head of neurosurgery at the Rio de Janeiro hospital where
Leite is recovering credits the man's astounding recovery to the
fact that the rod pierced a "non-eloquent" region of his brain,
an area that has no easily discernible cognitive, motor or
sensory functions. [How
Did Teen Survive Fall from Golden Gate Bridge?]

But despite Leite's doctors' heartening reports, Marla Hamberger,
an associate professor of clinical neuropsychology at the
Neurological Institute of New York, isn't convinced that he will
emerge from his ordeal with a totally unchanged personality.
According to Hamberger, even the impressively stiff upper lip
that Leite seems to be keeping might be a sign of mental changes
wrought by his
brain injury.

"Even the fact that he doesn't seem to be bothered by it could be
the effect of a frontal lesion, because most people would be
bothered by that," she told Life's Little Mysteries. "Sometimes
someone can seem functionally intact, but when you actually do
some testing, there may be more of an effect than is obvious."

In her work, Hamberger uses electro-stimulation to map
non-eloquent regions in patients’ brains before they undergo
neurosurgery, in order to plan surgical routes that will minimize
long-term functional decline. She says that before Leite has
undergone in-depth testing, it will remain unclear whether his
accident damaged a region that handled a cognitive faculty, such
as strategy planning, that isn't called up during bedside
conversation.

"With
Phineas Gage, [a change] also wasn't apparent immediately,"
she said. "My guess is that there’s probably something that's
changed; the frontal lobes are extremely important for social
behavior and higher cognitive function."